Decadence: A Very Short Introduction

Decadence: A Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the culture of decadence—the artistic expression of a conflicted sense of modernity—by tracing its origin in ancient Rome, development in nineteenth-century Paris and London, manifestation in early-twentieth-century Vienna and Weimar Berlin, and current resonance in contemporary life. It explores conflicting attitudes toward modernity in decadent culture by examining both aesthetic decadence—the excess of artifice—and social decadence, which involves excess in many forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. The integration of aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a move with far-reaching cultural consequences.